Why I am not a Christian

Ever since my deconversion several years ago, I always wanted to find a way to articulate my reasons for abandoning my former faith. I have articulated it in many ways and I realize this is going to be an ongoing process until at some point. I will enumerate reasons why I am not a Christian.

1. Faith- Faith is the essential ingredient in being a Christian as much as any other monotheistic religions (and non-monotheistic religions). What makes Christianity stand out from other religions is that it emphasizes so much on beliefs, while other religions emphasize more on rituals, cultures, etc. While it is possible to be an observing Jew without traditional beliefs, this is very rare in Christianity; it is often frown upon. Faith, for Christianity, is absolute and unconditional commitment to core beliefs of Christianity (known as Articles of Faith). However, this is very different from merely making assumptions. Many Christians use the fallacious argument that "we all have faith in something", pointing out that we make assumptions that we do not support with evidence. While these Christians may be unto something, the problem with their argument is that making assumptions (or merely having them) is very different from having unconditional commitment to beliefs. When we make assumptions, we can see these assumptions as "working-hypothesis", we use them as useful instruments to solve problems and understand the world. So, for example, if I try to solve the problem I have to make assumptions on what could work. However, I can test this assumption by solving the problem according to that assumption. If it turns out that the assumption is wrong, I discard it to find a better assumption. The thing is that we do not throw the baby out with the bath water, there are parts of our former assumptions that are right. We keep those parts and add them into new assumptions, and we repeat this process until we solve a problem. We do this with other things besides solving problems, such as understanding the world. Basically, we do trials and errors with our assumptions until we can come up with one that is basically right (or relatively right). What this means is that we are able to treat our assumptions as fallible, we can change them if we see that they are wrong; this is how our brains work so we can avoid making future mistakes. However, this potential quality of assumption is lacking when it comes to faith. Merely making assumptions is open to revision and even abandonment, but faith demands unconditional commitment to the assumption. For some Christians, it does not matter what the evidence or arguments say; your unconditional commitment to the assumption matters more than evidence and arguments. My problem with this is that it amounts to Dogmatism, which is the attitude in which you refuse to revise or change your beliefs since you assume that it is absolutely true even though evidence/reason says otherwise. A lot of Christians like to sugar coat this with fancy or pretty words like "faith" or "hope", but ultimately it's just plain old dogmatism. However, when people think about dogmatism they imagine aggressive, stubborn, and stringent pronouncement of their belief, but this is not entirely true. You can have complacent dogmatism as opposed to aggressive dogmatism; a Christian can be complacently dogmatic in so far as he is simply satisfied with his commitments that he does not feel the need to doubt it; aggressive dogmatist is not merely satisfied but aggressive about his commitments to the point of pushing it unto people. Both forms are still dogmatic, while the latter is more harmful, both approaches are still dogmatic. For me faith is just a non-starter because the kind of attitude has a tendency to produce sloppy thinking which comes along with logical fallacies and bad arguments. I said "tendency" since there are some intelligent Christians who come up with clever and methodical arguments absent of logical fallacies, but what I find is that these Christians are in the minority. I also see that other religions have a similar unconditional commitment except it's commitment  to different beliefs. How can you tell which beliefs are true? unconditional commitments alone does not inform us which one is true, it only informs us which ones we are committed to. I simply have no use for faith, it's very useless in informing us anything about reality. Having commitments  are important, but to demand that they should be unconditional is usually unreasonable since beliefs can be fallible. This does not mean we should not be committed to beliefs, we should but when there is reason to suspect that there is something wrong with the beliefs we should re-evaluate our commitments. Since I reject faith, it follows that I cannot be a Christian. I could be a deist, but even then I find the existence of God dubious. 
2. Existence of God is dubious- When faith is taken out of the equation, the belief in the existence of God looks dubious. Faith creates a sensational feeling of certainty that often makes the belief in the existence of God self-evident and difficult to doubt, but this is merely a sensational feeling of certainty. It is only about our subjective attitudes about our beliefs, but not objective indicators about reality. It tells more about ourselves than reality out there. Once we take off our "faith-goggles", we see the belief in the existence of God for what it is: dubious. I'm not saying it is false, I consider myself to be an agnostic atheist, meaning that I do not know for certain whether or not God exists but I lack the belief since I think it is implausible (but not impossible). So why does the existence of God look dubious? It looks dubious because once we have a better (though not complete) understanding of the universe, it becomes apparent that a lot of the phenomena or events in Nature are explained in the context of Nature from varying layers. We have causal mechanisms, laws of Nature, natural causes, and natural patterns to explain many things in reality. This gets to the point that the explanatory role of God becomes unclear: in what sense does God explain reality? One could point out that God could start the beginning of the universe, but it is unclear if the universe ever did have a beginning. One of the common misconception of big-bang is that it talks about the beginning of the universe, this is not true. Big Bang talks about the beginning of the expansion of the universe. When scientists extrapolate the expansion to singularity, it's unclear what it exactly looks like because it is beyond the observable universe. We are simply unsure, for all we know perhaps the universe always existed! That is as much of a good hypothesis as existence of God, but I think the former is slightly more plausible given the Laws of Conservation. However, I am not physicist, so I'll stop there, but my other point is that if God exists as a supra-cosmic being who interferes with natural/human affairs, we should find events that cannot be explained in the context of Nature alone but explained by divine providence. We haven't found such events, which makes the claim of the existence of God suspect to doubt. Many believers say you cannot prove the negative, I disagree. As long as you use Modus Tollens in which X implies Y but not Y, therefore not X, then you can prove the negative. Just point out that if God exists, then the universe should have events that is only best explained by divine providence, but since you cannot find such an event, then there probably is no God. This all depends on what events occur and how people interpret them. The problem is that people tend to misinterpret events as miracles, when in fact there could be natural causes (more often than not). This makes me doubtful of the existence of God, but I do not reject it out-right. After all, it is possible that God interferes less than how believers anticipated. It is possible that God exists but chose to hide himself or the events he cause. However, such reasoning is ad hoc at best, it creates an extra-hypothesis for the sole purpose of avoiding falsification, but fails to be supported by independent evidence. Pseudoscience tend to use a lot of ad hoc reasoning, which makes their belief suspect to doubt; same applies to theism. What makes the existence of God dubious is that alot of the evidence and arguments used to support the existence of God are not too strong. There are some clever ones, I'll  grant that, but that doesn't make them true. A good example is the fine-tune argument which is probably the more compelling arguments, but it seems to have it's problem. If you think carefully, the fine-tune argument can easily collapse into another problem of evil. If God fine-tuned the universe to create life, but parasites, predators, diseases, old age is part of life, then God fine-tuned the universe to permit suffering of life. But how can an all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent God do such a thing? If God is all-knowing, he should know the consequences of fine tuning the universe in the certain way; if God is all-powerful, he could have fine-tuned it in such a way that minimizes or eliminates suffering. But so far from observation there is so much suffering in life for millions of years even until the present day. This makes the fine-tune argument look bad! Also, even if the probability of life is so low in the universe since the value of cosmological constants are extremely sensitive that only certain values is conducive to life, how does this prove the existence of God? all we have is a data that needs explanation, God is just one of them but there are other alternative ones. What makes God a better explanation? If it's evidence, what can we appeal to besides the data that needs explaining? It's arguments like these that makes me doubt the existence of God, it makes me think that so far it's implausible (but not impossible). I'll grant that at least it could be the case that God exist, but I will not grant the case that it is highly reasonable or probable.
3. Bad Science and Anti-Intellectualism: This pertains mostly to conservative evangelical Christians and other conservative varieties of Christianity (i.e. Southern Baptism, Seventh Day Adventist, Pentacostal, Charismatic). Many times these Christians insist that they are not against science, they are only against evolution and big bang. However, I must disagree: by cherry-picking which part of science is true or false goes against the very spirit of science. Science is about using variety of empirical methodologies to test models and hypothesis in order to find evidence FOR and AGAINST the model; you do not cherry-pick evidence. Once the hypothesis is overwhelmingly supported, the consensus of scientists reflect likewise. This is why looking at the consensus among scientist is more reliable than looking at consensus among politicians; unlike scientists, politicians lack empirical methodology. This is why going against the scientific consensus IS going against science, you are not only going against the consensus but also what the consensus reflect: overwhelming evidence. You can doubt that such consensus is based on overwhelming evidence, but don't take my word for it: go read those peer-review articles. This also happens when it comes biblical scholarship; many biblical scholars use different methods to approach the bible, but they usually come to conclusions that goes against the beliefs of many conservative Christians. What happens is that they denounce the scholar's conclusions, and insist that bible is still the "Word of God" (whatever this means). Christianity has a long tradition of anti-intellectualism. Not all Christians are anti-intellectuals, there are intellectual who are Christians (i.e. Cornell West), but these kinds of Christians are not very common. Part of the reason is because many Christians distrust rationality, this is because rationality can come to conclusion that conflict with Christian beliefs. Remember earlier that I said Christianity requires unconditional commitment, well if anything conflict with it then it has to be rejected even if it is supported by overwhelming evidence or good arguments. This is why I find it difficult to accept Christianity, because majority of Christians fall under this description. I know there are Christians who are more liberal and "modern", but this is one of the reasons why I lost respect for Christianity.
4. Too much trust in personal experience- Christians tend to emphasize a lot on testimony both in the bible and outside the bible. Testimonies are bunk, since they are essentially just anecodtal evidence. In Natural sciences anecdotal evidences are highly unreliable. This is because anecdotal evidences are based on eye-witness accounts, which is problematic. It is problematic because a lot of studies in psychology shows that our personal experience is subjected to confabulation, cognitive biases, and fallible memories. It turns out that our memories are not very reliable since it does not act like photographic pictures but rather reconstructing our past experience by filling in the gaps. Testimonies are not free from this kind of problem, it often involves recalling memories. Also, testimonies often beg the question: they are appealing to the very belief that they already believe in to interpret their personal experience. They'll tell you that they believe, if you ask why they'll point to their testimony. If you ask why their testimony is true, they'll point to their belief. If you ask why their belief is true, they'll point to the testimony. It's a vicious never-ending circle. While personal experiences are important, I think Christianity places too much emphasis on personal experiences as testimony.
5. Morality: Christians like to see themselves as paragons of morality (mostly the conservative ones). They either insist that their belief is the source of morality or that at the very least it makes people into better people. I find this difficult to accept given that majority of Christians endorse homophobia. I do not think homosexual sex is immoral, perhaps it is not pleasant to observe but that does not make it immoral. What makes something immoral is if it causes (1) suffering (or gratuitous pain) (2) debilitating agency or personhood. However, Christianity goes as far as to say that the bible is the source of morality, but I find this difficult to accept. I find it difficult to accept that subjugating woman is a moral thing to do in church and house. I find it difficult to accept that people who simply do not believe are sent to hell (or just burn out of existence). I find it difficult to believe that something innocuous as pre-martial sex is immoral (given that there is careful use of contraception which minimizes risks, but not eliminate it). I think that most of the moral claims that Christians are committed to are mostly cultural taboos or mores than real objective moral truths. I do agree that killing, stealing, and lying is wrong, but the bible is very vague about these things. My problem with Christianity is that their moral beliefs are just plainly wrong. I know that there are some Christians who are not against homomsexuality, pre-marital sex, and such. However, more often than not, I find them in the minority...which tells me more about Christianity. 

Nature

I remind myself that I am part of Nature, which means that I am inseparable from it. I do not have this "ego" or "I" that grants me the privilege of isolation from the world. Consequently, I am a being-in-space-time bounded by the interdependent causes/conditions (whether determinate or indeterminate) that circumscribes  my personal identity to the point that it constitutes it. To try to separate myself from Nature would be like pulling mass out of matter, both are inseparable as I am inseparable from Nature. This reminds me that since impermanence or change is ubiquitous in Nature as much as it is essential to Nature, my existence would be an ephemeral and contingent feature of Nature. I am a wave of the vast ocean, a dune on the surface of changing sands. My existence would be a moment from the point of view of eternity.

People (Rant)

I'm not much of a people's person, I either like to do things on my own or hang out with a few close friends. I never understand why people like to divide themselves and then see themselves as separate groups of people, because when I look at people all I see are people. People sleep, wake up, eat, work, shit, fuck, talk, laugh, fear, seek, grieve, hate, lie, steal, kill, heal, love, lust, dream, disappoint, believe, hope, and die. People are fairly intelligent, but involuntarily foolish due to self-deception, cognitive biases, misguided confidence, and intransigence. People often have very foolish and naive understanding of the world and themselves, sometimes they flatter themselves (and their beliefs) too much.* Yes, there are political, cultural, and religious boundaries among people but those differences are artificial (though not superficial by any means) differences that sometimes hides the underlying similarities among people. This is why  I have contempt for some people who emphasize too much on the differences among people, they often fail to see that underneath we are so profoundly and pathetically similar to each other. It's one thing to value one's identity (no matter how artificial it is), but it's another thing to make an exaggerating claim that one's identity really set one apart from the rest of humanity to create a gulf as wide as the universe itself.  However, I remind myself that I am among those same people, I share many of their follies as much as many of their virtues.

*I had many foolish and naive views about the world and myself, studying philosophy has made me realize this.

Personal Identity and Self-Knowledge

If personal-identity is construed as a spatiotemporal wormhole that extends through time from the past to the present, then to have self-knowledge is to be able to know (to some degree) about the pasts that lead to the present time. While we form a narrative to connect these past events together to the present there is a potential discrepancy between our self-narrative and our persona-identity. There might be gaps in our self-narrative that does not account for past experiences or facts of our personal identity. This seems true but why does it pose a philosophical problem?

There is an analogy that is given between the personal identity and a train behind the warehouse. If I walk alongside with my friend near the train, at the one end of the train I exclaim "There is the train!" and as I walk through I end on the other end of the train and exclaim "There is the train!". A friend of mine, who tries to be clever, my retort "No Paul, that isn't the same exact train since it is only one cargo connected to the locomotive on the other end." I might respond "I never said that two ends of the train are the same, I said they are part of the same train". However, let's change this scenario a little bit: suppose that we walk across only to find a very long warehouse that blocks our view of the train. How do I know that both ends of the train are part of the same train rather than being separate? It seems that there is the gap (the warehouse) that makes it difficult to determine whether the parts are really separate or part of the same continuum.

That being the case, how can I know that one part of me that I simply do not remember (i.e. let's say, when I was four years old) is really part of the continuum of personal identity that I identify as "Paul"? Do I need a complete self-knowledge in order to justify that whatever part of me that I do not remember is really a part of me?

Possible Incoherence of regressive time travel

In this short essay I will argue that regressive time-travel is incoherent in B-Theory of Time (Eternalism). In B-Theory of Time, time is seen as events that are related to each in tenseless terms such as before and after. If this is the case then let's posit the series of events in succession A, B, C, D, and E. B, C, D, and E are all after A, and conversely A is before all of them.

The pattern seems to be that events are either before events after them or after events before them. If this is the principle of temporal pattern that we accept for B-Theory of Time then it appears that regressive Time Travel seems impossible. Let me make an argument to show why this is the case. 

Let's say that I use the time machine in event E which is way after event A. If what I do in E (using Time Machine) will afterwards get me to A, then what I do in E happens before I get to A. But if what I do in E happens before I get to A, then what I do in E happens before and after A at the same time. Because when I did use the time machine in event E that happens after A but it also happens before A at the same time. Therefore, what I did in event E happens before and after A. This would violate the principle of temporal pattern that events are either before events after them or after events before them. 

What this would mean is that time travel conventionally understood is impossible in B-Theory of Time. However there is a way to reconcile this contradiction: a spatiotemporal wormhole that connects A and E together. But how does this  reconcile the contradiction that E happens before and after A at the same time? This has to be understood in the principle of temporal pattern in which events are either after events before them or before events after them. E is an event that is after A but it is also an event that is before A even though it is also after A. So how does a wormhole solve this contradictory problem? There are two alternative explanation that can only be presented in the light of this question: is a wormhole an event?

This presupposes an assumption on what constitutes an event but let's assume that under B-Theory of Time an event is relational in so far as it is either before all other events after it or after all other events before it. Can a worm how be a event in so far as it is relational to all other events as before or after? Another alternative is that wormhole is not an event hence it is exempted from the principle of temporal patterns. I will argue against this alternative in favor of the argument that a wormhole is possibly an event:

The opening of the portal to the wormhole happens before the person cross through the portal through the wormhole. It seems that the tenseless relations "before" and "after" can coherently apply to the wormhole scenario. Let's instantiate this into X as opening the portal that leads to the portal and Y as going through the opened portal through the wormhole. X ipso facto is before Y and Y ipso facto is after X. So when I use a time machine in event E to go to A I go through the events X and Y in succession in order to get to A. So far so good since the temporal succession of X and Y is consistent with the principle, but does this reconcile the contradiction that E happens before and after A? One can argue like this: "What leads to event E is through the intermediates between E and A: B, C, and D. It is because of those intermediates that E is after A but not before A. These intermediates make it logically impossible for E to be also before A. However the use of the time travel in E leads to another intermediate such as X and Y. X and Y is a new intermediate that leads to A. So E happens before A through the intermediates X and Y and After A through intermediates B, C, and D. Therefore, there is no real contradiction in saying E happens before and after A."

So far this sounds like a very convincing response since both intermediates are consistent with the principle of temporal pattern so far. However I have a counter response to this argument: The intermediate X and Y happens after E and at the same time happens before A, which seems consistent with the principle of temporal pattern but there is a problem here: anything that happens after E also happens after A. If that is true then the intermediate X and Y happens after A and at the same time happens before A since they lead to A through time-traveling wormhole (X). Perhaps X itself counts as being a sub-part of E since it is within E that I open the portal before I time-traveled to A but what happens in Y, which is actually time-traveling through a wormhole (let's say mid-point) happens after E. If Y happens after E then it also happens way after A but at the same time Y happens before A since it leads to A. In a sense, the contradiction in E has transferred to the intermediate, more specifically Y.

If my counter-argument works here then it follows that regressive time-travel is still impossible in B-Theory of Time. 

The Past: personal view

A thought just came to me that the past cannot effect me because it isn't even presently efficacious enough to literally come back to me. Past certainly necessitate what happens later but the past is not present within the events that it necessitates. Rather it is our memory of the past that is presently efficacious to our emotions, thoughts, opinions, and reasons. It isn't the past that disturbs us but rather our memories of them. This is not to say that past is not real but rather when we often think about our past we do not always make a distinction between our memories and the past. With the past we do not have control over, it is beyond our reach. But with memories we might have control over how it effects us but not entirely it's existence. We can fool ourselves into thinking that we can deliberately and easily eliminate our memories but our memories will stick with us unless our brain is damaged. While our memories are there it does not follow that they must always effect us unless one of us has post-traumatic disorder (sorry, can't control that either). What we can do is learn to manage our own feelings associated with the memories by letting go of the feelings by accepting and understanding our memories which changes the emotions. This allows the mind to focus on the present activities rather than the past.

Possible Objections to my views on Space-Time and Quantity

These are possible objections I anticipated against my own views:

First Objection: The distinction between dimensional quantity and individuated quantity is not strong enough since the individuals being counted posses dimensional quantity even though they are also individuated as separate beings. One can count a class of squares, triangles, spheres, and other dimensional objects. The distinction between Dimensional Quantity and Individuated Quantity should lie on the method of quantification rather than intrinsic properties of quantity alone. Individuated quantity is based on the counting of individual objects whereas the dimensional quantity is the measurement of dimensional sizes.

Second Objection: The distinction between dimensional quantity and individuated quantity does not take into account of other quantities such as probability (or randomness), motion, and change. The view also seems to suggest that everything can be reduced to quantity but this is absurd since there are things such as "quality" and "substances".

Third Objection: Your argument did not solve the question as to whether how individuated quantity is possible. You posited that dimensional quantity can posses abstract points intrinsic in the dimensions of space-time to explain how individual things can occupy space-time rather than being spread out like a peanut butter. But by doing this you only go back to the same problem because you are positing abstract points which themselves are individuated quantity. Therefore you haven't really answered the question.